Dust of Life
an excerpt

The pathways that he walked through Reno's streets twisted and turned like the veins of gold that ran through the board he wore. Each was perfectly straight and set up at rigid right angles to one another, seeming deceptively simple, but to the unwise traveller they were a maze of similar looking avenues and alleyways. Finally he reached the Temple. It was a tall majestic building, with Corinthian styled columns and gargoyles that loomed over the edge of the room to watch over the few people left to pass them by. In front of the building was a large courtyard, marked only by a fountain adorned with dolphins that no longer had any water to spew from their mouths. His grandmother had told him stories of how, when she was a girl, she would pass by this fountain and drop pennies in, each with a wish, but now the fountain was hollow. Every last penny had been scrounged and used for something else. Traded perhaps, in the early years when money like that still had some value, but by now probably turned into jewelry or melted down to make into more useful things.